China’s Tianqi Lithium is looking to sell part of its majority stake in the world’s largest lithium mine as it struggles to pay back debt racked up in an aggressive global expansion, reported the Financial Times.
The Shenzhen-listed company is courting bidders for some of its 51% holding in Talison Lithium, which owns the Greenbushes mine in Western Australia, according to FT sources.
The move marks a setback for Tianqi, which in the space of a decade grew from a small provincial company to one of the world’s largest producers of lithium, putting China in a dominant position in the global market for the raw material used in batteries just as sales of electric cars took off.
Tianqi has struggled under a heavy debt load after it bought a $4.1 billion stake in Chile’s largest lithium company SQM in 2018 using a $3.5 billion loan from China’s state-owned Citic Bank.